Holding artificial intelligence accountable for its actions is easier said than done, predicts a team of British researchers. In a paper published this week in the journal Science Robotics, researchers Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt, and Luciano Floridi point out that policing robotics is extremely difficult. And as artificial intelligence becomes more widespread, it's going to become a greater problem for society. There are three discrete reasons robots and A.I. are going to be hard to regulate: robots and artificial intelligences are extremely diverse in application, construction, and transparency. The problem we face in policing A.I. is exemplified with the Random DarkNet Shopper, an A.I. built by a group of Swiss artists to buy random items from the darknet in late 2014.

Imagine the police arresting a bot and releasing it after months of custody and investigation. This is not a scenario from a futurist's blog -- it actually happened in Switzerland last year. What were the charges against the globe-trotting Swiss bot and its owners? Its name gives you an idea: Random Darknet Shopper. Created by a couple who are both artists, RDS shopped in the wrong places and bought illegal goods on the dark web, also called the "darknet", "deep web," and "darknet markets."